NOVEMBER’S BIRDS OF THE HEAVENS
As the whirling winds of winter’s edge strip the trees bare of their last leaves, the leaden sky of the eleventh month seems to push its cold face closer to earth. Who can tell when the northern sparrows first arrive? A whirl of brown leaves scatters in front of us; some fall back to earth; others rise and perch in the thick briers,—sombre little white-throated and tree sparrows! These brown-coated, low-voiced birds easily attract our attention, the more now that the great host of brilliant warblers has passed, just as our hearts warm toward the humble poly-pody fronds (passing them by unnoticed when flowers are abundant) which now hold up their bright greenness amid all the cold.
But all the migrants have not left us yet by any means, and we had better leave our boreal visitors until mid-winter’s blasts show us these hardiest of the hardy at their best.
We know little of the ways of the gaunt herons on their southward journey, but day after day, in the marshes and along the streams, we may see the great blues as they stop in their flight to rest for a time.
The cold draws all the birds of a species together. Dark hordes of clacking grackles pass by, scores of red-winged blackbirds and cowbirds mingle amicably together, both of dark hue but of such unlike matrimonial habits. A single male red-wing, as we have seen, may assume the cares of a harem of three, four, or five females, each of which rears her brown-streaked offspring in her own particular nest, while the valiant guardian keeps faithful watch over his small colony among the reeds and cat-tails. But little thought or care does mother cowbird waste upon her offspring. No home life is hers—merely a stealthy approach to the nest of some unsuspecting yellow warbler, or other small bird, a hastily deposited egg, and the unnatural parent goes on her way, having shouldered all her household cares on another. Her young may be hatched and carefully reared by the patient little warbler mother, or the egg may spoil in the deserted nest, or be left in the cold beneath another nest bottom built over it; little cares the cowbird.
The ospreys or fish hawks seem to circle southward in pairs or trios, but some clear, cold day the sky will be alive with hawks of other kinds. It is a strange fact that these birds which have the power to rise so high that they fairly disappear from our sight choose the trend of terrestrial valleys whenever possible, in directing their aerial routes. Even the series of New Jersey hills, flattered by the name of the Orange Mountains, seem to balk many hawks which elect to change their direction and fly to the right or left toward certain gaps or passes. Through these a raptorial stream pours in such numbers during the period of migration that a person with a foreknowledge of their path in former years may lie in wait and watch scores upon scores of these birds pass close overhead within a few hours, while a short distance to the right or left one may watch all day without seeing a single raptor. The whims of migrating birds are beyond our ken.
Sometimes, out in the broad fields, one’s eyes will be drawn accidentally upward, and a great flight of hawks will be seen—a compact flock of intercircling forms, perhaps two or three hundred in all, the whole number gradually passing from view in a southerly direction, now and then sending down a shrill cry. It is a beautiful sight, not very often to be seen near a city—unless watched for.
To a dweller in a city or its suburbs I heartily commend at this season the forming of this habit,—to look upward as often as possible on your walks. An instant suffices to sweep the whole heavens with your eye, and if the distant circling forms, moving in so stately a manner, yet so swiftly, and in their every movement personifying the essence of wild and glorious freedom,—if this sight does not send a thrill through the onlooker, then he may at once pull his hat lower over his eyes and concern himself only with his immediate business. The joys of Nature are not for such as he; the love of the wild which exists in every one of us is, in him, too thickly “sicklied o’er” with the veneer of convention and civilisation.
Even as late as November, when the water begins to freeze in the tiny cups of the pitcher plants, and the frost brings into being a new kind of foliage on glass and stone, a few insect-eaters of the summer woods still linger on. A belated red-eyed vireo may be chased by a snowbird, and when we approach a flock of birds, mistaking them at a distance for purple finches, we may discover they are myrtle warblers, clad in the faded yellow of their winter plumage. In favoured localities these brave little birds may even spend the entire winter with us.
One of the best of November’s surprises may come when all hope of late migrants has been given up. Walking near the river, our glance falls on what might be a painter’s palate with blended colours of all shades resting on the smooth surface of the water. We look again and again, hardly believing our eyes, until at last the gorgeous creature takes to wing, and goes humming down the stream, a bit of colour tropical in its extravagance—and we know that we have seen a male wood, or summer, duck in the full grandeur of his white, purple, chestnut, black, blue, and brown. Many other ducks have departed, but this one still swims among the floating leaves on secluded waterways.
Now is the time when the woodcock rises from his swampy summer home and zigzags his way to a land where earthworms are still active. Sometimes in our walks we may find the fresh body of one of these birds, and an upward glance at the roadside will show the cause—the cruel telegraph wires against which the flight of the bird has carried it with fatal velocity.
One of the greatest pleasures which November has to give us is the joy of watching for the long lines of wild geese from the Canada lakes. Who can help being thrilled at the sight of these strong-winged birds, as the V-shaped flock throbs into view high in air, beating over land and water, forest and city, as surely and steadily as the passing of the day behind them. One of the finest of November sounds is the “Honk! honk!” which comes to our ears from such a company of geese,—musical tones “like a clanking chain drawn through the heavy air.”
At the stroke of midnight I have been halted in my hurried walk by these notes. They are a bit of the wild north which may even enter within a city, and three years ago I trapped a fine gander and a half a dozen of his flock in the New York Zoological Park, where they have lived ever since and reared their golden-hued goslings, which otherwise would have broken their shells on some Arctic waste, with only the snowbirds to admire, and to be watched with greedy eyes by the Arctic owls.
| A haze on the far horizon, The infinite tender sky, The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields, And the wild geese sailing high; And ever on upland and lowland, The charm of the goldenrod— Some of us call it Autumn, And others call it God. W. H. Carruth. |